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When this happens, the poor excuse for good journalism we call "news" can finally die off and we'll be left to consume really good, valuable content. I guess I

When this happens, the poor excuse for good journalism we call "news" can finally die off and we'll be left to consume really good, valuable content. I guess I'm drifting a little more off topic, but oh well. Do you think there is potential for harm in a model where straight news isn't presented? One of the advantages of instant news is that there is little time for someone to weave their own views into what they write[1]. Despite how much I enjoy The Economist, its impossible to call their writing unbiased. [1] I suppose its possible to take the opposite view on this. A responsible journalist will try to keep their views out of the article, but that is difficult and takes time, so their instant writing will be full of personal views. I guess it depends on how opinionated the journalist is on the news they are reporting and how unbiased they want to be.

coffeemug 17y ago
Do you think there is potential for harm in a model where straight news isn't presented? I don't think straight news will disappear, to the contrary, I think the volume and level of detail of straight news will increase exponentially. It will just move to Twitter (or a similar platform). Build a good UI for Twitter trending topics, and you've got straight news. But I do think there will be little money for straight news content providers, since anyone can post a tweet - all the money in that space will just go to the publishing platform (looks like it's going to be Twitter). The reasons why news and journalism are tightly coupled are completely rooted in old technological limitations - newspapers were the only ones who could deliver breaking news, and they were also the only ones who could publish opinions. So journalism is traditionally perceived as a mix of the two, to the point where the idea the two can be separate is alien to people. But once we take modern communication technology to its logical conclusion, it looks like news and journalism will go their separate ways - there is no longer a reason for them to be tightly coupled. Twitter will handle the news delivery, and some other platform will handle original commentary delivery. So no, I don't think there is any danger at all.
- roundsquare 17y ago
  Thats a really good point. I see what your saying about the decoupling of straight news and journalism and it seems reasonable in a number of situations (tech news, local news, political news, etc...). But there are situations where this model isn't feasible. Two that come to mind: 1) Investigate journalism. In this case, someone is digging for facts and looking for connections. Tweeting, or any other instant platform, may not be the right medium for this. This looks like one area where news and journalism would need to remain intertwined. 2) Reporting from dangerous areas or areas without good wireless coverage. If someone is reporting facts from Darfur, it seems unlikely that any instant publishing platform could work. Still, it appears you are probably right for a large number of situations. It looks like the situations I'm describing would need to stay closer to the current model for some time.
  - coffeemug 17y ago
    I agree with both of these points, although I don't think of the first situation as "news" at all (in a sense that it isn't necessarily dealing with current events that require time sensitive delivery). I think what you're digging at here is that you can't just provide a platform for freelance writers to write their pieces and pay them according to popularity - this model doesn't cover all cases. If there is demand for investigative journalism (which often, but not always, requires funding and cooperation) and reporting from dangerous areas, organizations would have to form that fund these endeavors. But, no matter how profitable this might be, this isn't a scalable business, so it isn't lucrative from a startup's point of view. It sounds like organizations like Associated Press will eventually transition to handle scenario two, which they'll publish via Twitter (once it lets content providers monetize their content), and some newspapers will transition to scenario one (once one top-brand newspaper or a startup builds a value-added publishing platform). The rest of the newspapers will simply die and many of the good writers will transition to a freelance model. Of course this gets very fuzzy very quickly, so most of these predictions will likely not pan out this way, but it seems pretty clear where the overall trend is going - technology will decouple a few concepts that are tightly coupled today. News would be decoupled from high quality written content, and production of content will be decoupled from its publishing and delivery.

coffeemug 17y ago

Do you think there is potential for harm in a model where straight news isn't presented? I don't think straight news will disappear, to the contrary, I think the volume and level of detail of straight news will increase exponentially. It will just move to Twitter (or a similar platform). Build a good UI for Twitter trending topics, and you've got straight news. But I do think there will be little money for straight news content providers, since anyone can post a tweet - all the money in that space will just go to the publishing platform (looks like it's going to be Twitter). The reasons why news and journalism are tightly coupled are completely rooted in old technological limitations - newspapers were the only ones who could deliver breaking news, and they were also the only ones who could publish opinions. So journalism is traditionally perceived as a mix of the two, to the point where the idea the two can be separate is alien to people. But once we take modern communication technology to its logical conclusion, it looks like news and journalism will go their separate ways - there is no longer a reason for them to be tightly coupled. Twitter will handle the news delivery, and some other platform will handle original commentary delivery. So no, I don't think there is any danger at all.

roundsquare 17y ago
Thats a really good point. I see what your saying about the decoupling of straight news and journalism and it seems reasonable in a number of situations (tech news, local news, political news, etc...). But there are situations where this model isn't feasible. Two that come to mind: 1) Investigate journalism. In this case, someone is digging for facts and looking for connections. Tweeting, or any other instant platform, may not be the right medium for this. This looks like one area where news and journalism would need to remain intertwined. 2) Reporting from dangerous areas or areas without good wireless coverage. If someone is reporting facts from Darfur, it seems unlikely that any instant publishing platform could work. Still, it appears you are probably right for a large number of situations. It looks like the situations I'm describing would need to stay closer to the current model for some time.
- coffeemug 17y ago
  I agree with both of these points, although I don't think of the first situation as "news" at all (in a sense that it isn't necessarily dealing with current events that require time sensitive delivery). I think what you're digging at here is that you can't just provide a platform for freelance writers to write their pieces and pay them according to popularity - this model doesn't cover all cases. If there is demand for investigative journalism (which often, but not always, requires funding and cooperation) and reporting from dangerous areas, organizations would have to form that fund these endeavors. But, no matter how profitable this might be, this isn't a scalable business, so it isn't lucrative from a startup's point of view. It sounds like organizations like Associated Press will eventually transition to handle scenario two, which they'll publish via Twitter (once it lets content providers monetize their content), and some newspapers will transition to scenario one (once one top-brand newspaper or a startup builds a value-added publishing platform). The rest of the newspapers will simply die and many of the good writers will transition to a freelance model. Of course this gets very fuzzy very quickly, so most of these predictions will likely not pan out this way, but it seems pretty clear where the overall trend is going - technology will decouple a few concepts that are tightly coupled today. News would be decoupled from high quality written content, and production of content will be decoupled from its publishing and delivery.